


Dead Man's Town

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: BAMF Bill Denbrough, F/M, M/M, Multi, No beta we die like mene, Non-Consensual Touching, Obsession, Pennywise is His Own Warning (IT), Protective Losers Club (IT), Slow Build, Slow To Update, Stalking, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:33:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A different choice is made one rainy October day, and suddenly the future spins off course.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Pennywise, Bill Denbrough/Everyone, Georgie Denbrough & The Losers Club, The Losers Club/The Losers Club (IT)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65
Collections: anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up into the IT fandom three years late with Starbucks and fic*

Bill woke with a start from a sleep he hadn't even noticed falling into.

He lay blinking at the windows, watching the rain streaming down the glass. His head was still jumbled from his dreams, already fragmenting into confused snatches of memory that puzzled him almost as much as they unnerved him. 

Splashing through water in the dark. Swollen balloons glimmering red against an endless summer sky. A wizened madman with a twisted resemblence to Henry Bowers. Eggs crunching underfoot. An unearthly wail of hate and despair. There had been...a turtle? Yes, something of that shape, stretching so far and wide that his mind could barely comprehend it. Glass sliding red against his palm, a promise ringed in clasped fists. 

And there, at the edge of it all, darting through a maze of fear and pain and howling grief, a rain-soaked yellow slicker. 

Guilt suddenly surged in Bill as he sat up in bed, edged in a panic so sharp that it seemed to cut through everything. He must've nodded off after Georgie left the room, but the clock on the bedside only seemed to have ticked off a minute or so since he'd laid his head back on the pillow, watching the door click close behind his brother. 

His brother. His little brother who'd gone out in the rain alone, because Bill hadn't...Bill had told him-

Bill was halfway across the room before he'd even registered throwing the bedsheets off. There was a walkie-talkie in his hands, but the fingers that had snagged it from his desk were too clumsy to punch in the button, his breath whistling out through his teeth as he thudded down the stairs. He could only distantly register the jarring close of his mother's music as she called out to him in surprise, could barely feel his thin pyjamas and bare feet as he flung open the front door and stepped into the endless rain. 

Bill was soaked to the bone in moments, water cascading down his face until he could barely see the blurred streets in front of them. He didn't need to. His feet sloshed wildly down the streets without instruction, tracing a path that was as engraved on his mind as if he'd spent fruitless hours walking them again and again without hope, turning corners and jumping barriers with practiced ease. On and on he ran, spurred on by a panic he couldn't explain, until suddenly a flash of colour caught his eye. 

George in the middle of the street, crouched before an enormous storm drain that lay open like some endless blackened mouth stretched wide. He looked up in surprise as Bill came staggering up beside him, breathing heaving out in great ragged gasps that didn't allow for speech. George had no such compunctions as he was yanked backwards, but Bill barely heard his indignant squawking as he clung to his little brother for dear life. 

Georgie. Wet and confused, and so very, very small, but solid and alive in his arms, and Bill could only sob out his relief as Georgie looked up at him, first with impatience and then with concern - _are you OK, Billy? Don't be mad, I'm sorry I lost the boat but he caught it_ -

And with a feeling very much like stepping off the edge of the quarry cliff, Bill looked down to see a face peering up out of the storm drain at them both. 

In that initial start of shock and fear, a different image sparked behind Bill's eyes. That same face, but cracked and crumbling, gaze locked on his in fear and rage as it fell apart at the seams. A thought pinwheeled wildly through his head - _we killed you we KILLED you_ \- before it settled into cold clarity. 

This was real. The clown was staring up at him with undisguised curiosity, and its - Its face was unmarked and whole, save for the ruby-red lips splitting Its face apart. A hint of buckteeth peeked through the paint, and It's eyes were a blue soft enough to drown in. They looked comforting familiar, like Bill's own eyes, like his mother's. 

Bill wasn't fooled. He could see the hunger lurking behind them, hunger enough to drown the whole town. He could guess what those eyes could do, those teeth. 

_Pennywise_ \- the name settled itself in Bill's mind with unnerving certainty and in a time far from the rain and fear, he'd be able to wonder how - was leering at him, but It's voice was as casually polite as if he'd dropped in for afternoon tea.

"Georgie! Billy came down here after all. Why don't you tell him about the circus?" 

It knew he was afraid, part of Bill noted clinically. It was a coward who normally cut and ran when It's prey was no longer alone, but...two boys standing in the pelting rain, shivering and uncertain, were too tempting a treat to resist. No wonder It's smile was so taunting. It thought they couldn't run. 

Georgie stiffened under Bill's hand even as he offered a tremulous smile, and Bill knew with a sense of grinding horror and rage that his brother was not completely blind to the chilling sense of threat in the air. Hadn't been. Part of him _did_ see, but shrank from the inevitable conclusion, because he was a young child talking to an friendly, authoritative adult and fatal politeness kept him rooted to the spot even as a little voice in his head warned him to run. 

Bill had no such constraints. 

"We're leaving," he bit out. "K-k-keep the f-fuck away from my brother."

Distantly, he could hear George's gasp at the foul language towards this thing in the shape of an adult, but Bill kept his eyes forward. The clown actually looked sad as It lowered the crumpled boat, but Its voice was as sweet as spider's venom.

"Oh? You don't want to stay, Billy? What about the circus? The balloons? I'll show you both. Alllllll my balloons and all my friends. They float together down here, and if you'll only stay, you'll float too..."

And for a second, Bill was transfixed. The words seemed to hum through the air around him until the world went soft at the edges and he was drawn into Pennywise's lilting voice. No frightened brother, no sting of gravel against his bare feet, no bone-chilling rain. No, he was warm as could be. He could actually hear the faint carousel music piping through the air, the sweet sizzle of doughboys, even the thrilling laughter of children singing out a cheerful nursery tune as he gazed into the flickering orange light. 

A voice, splintering through his mind with noxious laughter as he fell through endless dark towards that hideous, unknowable light - _you'll look and you'll go mad...but you'll live...and live inside them...inside Me..._

And suddenly Bill was back in his own skin. He blinked rainwater from his eyes, and saw with cold horror Pennywise uncoiling from the storm drain, gloved hands grasping at the grey cement either side, eyes roiling back in Its head as endless teeth scythes out from Its splitting face. 

Georgie shrank back into his side, screaming and Bill-

Bill was never a crack shot like Be- like someone. But sometimes you have to pitch the ball and hope like hell, even when the odds are against you, even when your chosen missile leaves something to be desired. 

Bill could not entirely blame It for halting for a precious, puzzled second, because in all Its festering, endless existence in Derry, it was probably safe to say that no one had ever cracked It in the eye with a walkie-talkie before. 

Bill didn't wait for Its reaction. He grabbed Georgie's hand and ran, skidding off into the rainwater with fingers locked so tightly with Georgie's that nothing could prise them apart. 

They didn't stop running until streets away, when George's shorter legs finally came staggering to a halt, wheezing as badly as Eddie after gym class. Bill stumbled with him and immediately whipped around, expecting to see the maddened clown bearing down on them, slavering with fury over Its stolen prey. 

There was nothing there. The street was silent and eerily empty, save for the rain splashing down into the fast-flowing gutter streams. No lights were on and not a curtain twitched in all the row of houses surrounding them. It was as if Derry itself was stunned into stillness by what happened, aghast that they were still alive. 

But this town never stayed still for long. 

"B-Billy?" 

He looked down into his brother's face, screwed up and tearful and _alive_. 

"I'm so sorry. I-I lost the boat. She w-went into the water-" 

Bill let out a noise that was half a laugh and half a sob. He sank down to the ground with Georgie in his arms in a tangled embrace, holding him close as they cried together, overcome with the relief and horror of it all.

The rainwater gurgled around them, low and cold and eyes flickered yellow in the reflection puddled against the slick sidewalk, watching for the whole walk home.

Bill didn't notice. He had his brother back. There would need to be explanations made, apologies offered, plans drawn up. But all that could come later. He had Georgie with him, and for this single shining moment, the whole world felt like it had finally come right again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short start, but thanks for reading this far! I'd love to hear what you liked, what you didn't, or any other thoughts you'd be keen to share.


	2. Chapter 2

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young boy stuck at home with only his family for company must be in want of some decent entertainment, and it was Bill Denbrough's good fortune that he had friends so charitably inclined that they would spend a Saturday morning splashing through the waterlogged streets of Derry to rescue him from this dire predicament. 

"-and I got the reading assignment off Mrs Douglas, but I don't think Bill'll have time to do it before Monday unless we help-" 

"I don't think one assignment matters too much, but his folks aren't going to want him to fall behind if he's still sick next week-" 

"Sick? He'll be down in Juniper Hill with his brains leaking out his ears if you make him sit and read through _that_ bull-" 

"You didn't do the assignment," Stan sighed as they turned the corner towards the Denbrough house, his flat tone making the words a statement rather than a question. 

Richie did not dignify the unfair (if accurate) accusation with a response, sloshing his heels gleefully through the shining dark puddles that lay everywhere after the previous day's downpour. One particularly wild skid sent a freezing spray splashing against Eddie's shins, who flapped an arm at him, squawking in a fury that probably would have made Mrs K dab her eyes in pride. 

"Will you cut it out? My mom will freak if I come back dirty; I told her we were just going to the arcade."

"Why didn't you tell her we were coming here?" Stan asked with a quizzical frown. "I thought she liked Bill."

It went unsaid that Bill with his smartly-kept clothes, ability to wipe his feet and say "thank you, ma'am" was placed in far higher esteem in Sonia Kapsbrak's bespectacled eyes than Richie, whose presence on her porch that morning she had only begrudgingly allowed as she fussed over Eddie, briskly immune to the hushed snickers in the background. 

"Not while he's sick she doesn't. I'll probably have to have a signed note from his doctor _and_ his ma before she'd let him over our place again."

But Mrs Denbrough didn't look to be much in the mood for handing out notes when she answered the door. There was a faint frown creasing the corners of her mouth and cutting a furrow between her large blue eyes as she looked them up and down, and finally let out a clipped sigh. 

"Please tell William that he has to stay in _bed_ if he wants his friends over. If I catch him running out into the rain again like a hooligan, he'll have to stay in his room until I'm sure that temperature's down again."

"Running in the rain?" Richie asked with interest; this sounded a great deal more exciting than how he'd imagined Stuttering Bill spending his week off sick (coughing his lungs out into a wastepaper basket had been closer to his guess) and he felt some mild affront that Bill hadn't the decency to hotfoot it over to his place if he was going to mount an escape from the watchful eyes of Fort Denbrough's frazzled prison wardens. 

Mrs Denbrough's lips pinched together, but before she could elaborate, a voice came piping up behind her. 

"Eddie? Have you come over to see Billy?" 

Eddie waved cheerfully as Georgie Denbrough came sidling into view in the hallway behind Mrs Denbrough's slim figure. The kid put on a bashful smile as he spotted Richie (who had gotten to know Bill later in life and was therefore marked out as a Big Kid in a way that he guessed Eddie, attached to Bill's hip since before Georgie was even born, never would be) but there seemed an odd hesitance as he approached the door, a wariness flickering deep in his eyes as he glanced beyond Richie and Stan to the empty, rainswept street behind them. 

A faint unease prickled Richie's spine like a rat scurrying down a drainpipe. He exchanged a glance with Stan, oddly relieved by the twist to Stan's lips that meant he sensed it - whatever _it_ was - too. It was difficult to put into words in his head, because Richie had never before felt like this at the Denbrough house, this cold, thick tension that suddenly seemed to hum between the ever-genteel Mrs Denbrough and her son, still skittering away from the door like he thought Stan had an alligator parked behind him. 

Luckily, Richie Tozier was never one to let nerves get in the way of a good show, and he blithely smiled at Georgie before inhaling deeply and launched into the as yet unrefined but still very much underrated Southern Gentleman's Voice. 

"Can this be Master Denbrough? Ah do declare Mister Uris, ah have never seen such a fine flower of womanhood round this here Derry parts-" 

" B-buh-beep-beep, Richie" came a raspy laugh, thick with phlegm, and with an lightheaded sense of relief, Richie looked up to see Big Bill coming down the stairs towards them. 

Only it wasn't Bill, not as they'd left him last week. Richie couldn't explain it, that instinctive understanding that settled over him, something that went deeper than Bill's sweat-damped hair and flushed cheeks, some sort of new finish to him that had not been in the boy they'd last seen being briskly bundled out of school by his mother after the teacher had at last lost patience with that rattling cough and got up to ring his folks with the unfortunate confirmation that the flu sweeping round had claimed a new victim. Something about the purpose with he strode down the stairs, strong and easy despite his obviously lingering illness. Something in the guarded way he too shot a look at the open air behind them, though there was a fierce set to his gaze that Georgie's nervous glance hadn't carried. 

Something maybe in the way he was staring at Eddie and Stan, like they'd tossed some flour over their heads and popped up in front of him to shout "BOO!" 

"You all right, Bill?" Eddie asked, brow wrinkled in concern. 

Bill nodded, looking weirdly shaky in a way that Richie could not remember seeing him look before; he found himself wondering with a troubled sense of maturity if maybe Mrs Denbrough had a point about that whole run into the rain thing.

Then, in a movement that absolutely none of them could have seen something, Bill did something that shocked Richie completely-

He threw himself forward and hugged them all. 

Richie barely had a chance to yelp in surprise before he was dragged into a tangle of limbs, only a quick jerk of his head preventing Stan's head from colliding with his glasses. His first instinct would be to slip loose and reach for a joke instead, to swat Bill playfully around the head and ask when on earth he had turned into such a _girl_ -

But he found himself doing none of that. Instead, he reached up with one hand and clumsily patted Bill around the back, the other arm hugging back just as tight. 

"Missed you too, Big Bill."

Bill let out a choked kind of laugh and pulled away, running the back of his neck almost sheepishly. He opened his mouth to speak-

"All right," Mrs Denbrough said, and Richie didn't even have to look round at her to know her face had softened up at the sight of her son, who looked like he was teetering on the edge of a full-out bawling fit. 

"Your friends can stay over a little while. Just get back into bed now, and don't push yourself, deal?" 

Bill nodded almost imperceptibly, reaching out a hand to his little brother. "C-come on, G-Guh-Georgie, you too."

Wow. Big Bill must have felt really sick if he was letting Georgie hang out with them; Richie, Stan and Eddie had the benign tolerance towards him that teenagers always find for friends' little siblings while rarely extending it to their own, but Bill would normally remind Georgie to scarper when he wanted to hang out on his own with them. Maybe Stan should've been working on the eulogy instead of kicking a man while he was down and inflicting Mrs Douglas' book report on Bill instead. 

"Rough week, Bill?" he laughed, clapping a hand on Bill's thin shoulder. 

Bill tilted his head at him as the five of them trooped up the stairs. There was a blue-grey tinge of exhaustion drawn under his eyes, and Georgie seemed to be clutching his hand oddly tight. But the smile stretching over his face was so brilliant, it was like none of that mattered at all. 

"T-t-trust me, Tozier - you have _no_ idea."

* * *

The sunset was shining a brilliant orange light through Bill's bedroom curtains by the time Eddie sheepishly muttered about how he had to get off because it was getting late. Bill sent a pillow flying into Richie's face before he could finish his crude rejoinder that by uncanny coincidence Mrs Kapsbrak had said the very same to him last night. Georgie, still buoyed up with the pride of being allowed in with the older boys, broke into fits of giggles as Richie straightened his glasses in exaggerated affront. 

"Jeez, tough crowd. You better look after your brother, Georgie, 'cause it looks like all that coughing cracked clean through his funny bone."

"You _know_ it doesn't work like that, jackass," Eddie groused, although there was no heat to the words. He fussed over Bill's pillows one last time before he went, hooking an elbow through Richie's to yank him through the doorway before he could launch into another Voice. As they clattered down the stairs, Bill's mother called up to ask if Georgie had had his bath like he'd promised yet, sending him scrambling out of the room with a nervous squeak. 

Stan lingered by the door before he left, his head cocked to the side like one of the drawings in his previous bird guides as he regarded Bill with a serious expression that made him look far older than their twelve years. Bill, still half-swaddled in his bedclothes, had the uncomfortable feeling that that clear, careful gaze was boring right through him. 

Stan had always been able to see things a bit more clearly, weigh up the facts and recognise the logic in the same way he could pinpoint a bird through its trilling warble. There was something comfortingly familiar in the way he didn't flinch from a problem, but broke it down and reassembled it until it made sense. 

"Are you sure you're feeling better, Bill?" 

Bill's tongue was thick and cold in his mouth. Stan was watching him so carefully, with his starched collar and neat curls perfectly in place, pristine and untouched. He was a thousand miles away from that rain-swept street with those yellow eyes burning poison-bright against the dark. 

Part of Bill felt like that was it, that if he could just bridge the gap between the ordinary and insane, tell Stan what he'd seen and have that cool logic turn the monstrous into something understandable...then it would all be all right. To have Stan, have Richie, have Eddie in front of him and be able to explain it all, to have his friends with their understanding and their strength behind him-

But...but settling among that certainty, a skitter of doubt as fine as spidersilk...

But tightening its fists around his throat to cut his words off more cruelly than his stutter ever did, was that indescrible fear. That his friendships, which had survived through kindergarten, tutting parents and the worst Henry Bowers had to offer, would run aground on this. That this step would at last prove too far, that even Eddie would doubt a vision of a monster clown haunting the suburbs. That all Stan's logic, with its scalpel-sharp edge, would shatter like spun glass against this hideous new reality, and then...and then...

_"I can stand to be scared, but I hate being dirty like this, I hate not knowing where I am-"_

All Bill had were frantic flashes in his head, a mess of blackness and knowledge and feelings that were so tangled up he could barely tell memory from nightmare. How could he explain anything? _Bill_ didn't even know half the truth of it. 

Stan was still waiting for an answer. Bill smiled weakly, settling back against his pillows to try and give the impression that the lapse was more down to physical weakness than uncertainty.

"Still under the weather, but I'm getting better. N-n-nothing to worry about."

A strange look passed over Stan's face; he opened and shut his mouth several times, before shaking his head with in a few short, sharp jerks. Bill was oddly reminded of an actor who had missed his cue, struggling silently to pick up the thread to find his way back to his lines. 

But then Stan shrugged, smiling tightly. 

"I'm glad. See you at school on Monday then?" 

"S-s-sure" Bill forced out, watching Stan slip out of the door with a strange heaviness settling over him. 

Their visit must have taken more out of him that Bill had first thought. He soon fell into a fitful sleep, in which he tossed and turned through a haze of dreams where he scrabbled frantically through pitch darkness as someone far away shrieked his name. 

When he finally came back to himself to peer groggily at the clock, Bill realised with some dismay that he'd missed his chance to say goodnight to Georgie as it was now far past his brother's bedtime. Their parents must have checked on him before deciding not to wake him for dinner; his bedroom door was ajar and as he sat up to knuckle the sleep from his eyes he saw the faint blue-white light that meant someone was still downstairs in the kitchen. 

Bill's stomach abruptly rumbled loudly, and he sighed. Stifling a yawn, he shoved the covers off and ambled out of his room, squinting through the shadows as he made his way towards the stairs. His father was normally very strict about him and Georgie sneaking snacks, but he figured that his illness would get him a little slack. Plus, at this time it was far more likely to be Bill's mother finishing up the dishes, and she was far more likely to be swayed by a mournful look, especially if he offered to help. 

Bill had always liked being his mother's helper, he remembered with a distant pang as he softly padded down the staircase, taking care to keep quiet to avoid waking everyone else. The idea of seeing her bustling around the kitchen with the purpose and welcome that had once seemed like a faded dream warmed him, and he found himself smiling as he gently pushed the kitchen door open. 

As Bill suspected, it was his mother who had stayed up, although she'd apparently been taking down the laundry instead; the cellar door was propped open wide and he could hear the rumbling spin of the machine humming faintly beneath their feet. His mother's hand was toying with the cord as she peered idly down, gaze fixed on a point past where the creaking slats of the stairs disappeared into darkness. 

For some reason, Bill suddenly had Eddie's voice in his ear, rattling off statistics about trips and slips, falls with their broken necks and cracked skulls, too sincere to be truly irritating. It made him roll his eyes a little at the time, but he found himself clearing his throat as he approached his mother's back, trying to draw her attention away from that dizzying rush of black. 

It worked; her eyes brightened as she saw him and she held a hand out to him, the other brushing something off the folds of her favourite blue dress. "Billy! You're up late."

"S-s-sorry" he offered, hating how he couldn't stop his words knotting around his tongue even here. He knew his mother fretted so much about his stutter, and it always seemed far more apparent in front of her when he could do it a thousand times in front of his friends without even thinking of it. "I couldn't sleep."

Her face softened. "Bad dreams, Billy?" 

He nodded hesitantly, not wanting to trust any part of this precious moment to his faltering, feeble words. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see water trickling down the smooth glass of the windows and realised the rain must have started again, which must be why his mother was so keen to retrieve their clothes. The heavy, rank smell of the cellar with its faint undertone of rotting vegetation still pressed against the room despite Bill's father draining the floodwater this morning. 

His mother hummed under her breath as she reached out for him, smoothing a hand over his hair. Bill eagerly leaned into her touch, barely hearing her murmur that he mustn't worry, that she was here now and she would show him such sweet dreams-

Bill took a breath to speak, and almost gagged at the wet, rotten scent of her, the smell of a child's corpse rotting in the hot sun, the sweet-sour reek of pus from a wound, the acrid fume of old greasepaint feathering over her face as Pennywise's white-gloved hands whipped from her sides to seize his face in a pincer-sharp grip. 

For a moment, pure shock froze Bill into place like a paralysed lemming. It couldn't - not here, not now, It never-

Then he saw those eyes, blooming bright in the dark like the lights of an oncoming train, and the reality of the situation hit him harder than a Bowers' gut punch. 

It was here. _It_ was _here_. 

Here, in his house with his parents asleep and Georgie helpless in his bed upstairs-

The cold silk of It's glove slid against his face, trailing a cloying stench of decay. He could feel the prick of its claws under the fabric stroking over his eyelids, catching at the edges. The yellowed lace gathered at Its wrists scratched against his chin as he raked his nails frantically against the skin, fruitlessly trying to prise himself loose. 

Right. 

_Right_. 

Bill rocked his head back within Its unforgiving grip, just enough to shift the angle a little, and bit down _hard_. 

His teeth crunched through something that was most definitely not human flesh, and a rush of something cold and pungent burst across his tongue. But Bill could only feel the roar of outrage boiling through him, that It would dare to come here, dare to show Itself so soon again in his triumph when It once had been content to leave his family to their unbearable grief, and he locked his jaw as hard as it would go. 

He heard a startled hiss, but barely had time to revel in it before It abruptly shoved him back, slamming his head into the side of the refrigerator in a single brutal motion. 

White light flashed across the inside of Bill's eyelids as the pain sent him limp. Dimly, he could hear the dry rattle of the colourful fridge magnets hitting the kitchen tiles after Bill's flailing body had knocked them clear. 

His parents had to have heard that. The thought hammered wildly through his head. There was no way they could be sleeping through this. They'd know something was wrong, and they'd come rushing down to help-

Bill heard the gurgling chuckle of the clown and forced his eyes open with an effort that felt like it took eternity to muster. He expected to see Its teeth already unfurled, red-tinged maw dropping open for the feast, but the clown wasn't looking at him. Instead, Its head was tilted curiously at the spidery hand Bill sank his teeth into. There was no blood, Bill saw with disgust, only an oily black ichor bubbling up and curling into the air like viscous smoke. 

Bill wondered if It had ever bled before It met the Losers. He hoped it _burned_.

It regarded the wound with an odd expression for a few beats - if Bill didn't know better, he'd have called it something like fascination - before one eye swivelled around and fixed its gaze on him. 

"That," It said in a voice that slurred around its teeth, more of an animalistic rumble than a human voice, "was not very polite, Billy."

"This is my house," Bill snapped, wishing he could stretch his hand far up enough to try and gouge out the clown's eyes. "Get out."

It laughed, a shrill cackle that scraped against Bill's every nerve and echoed around the kitchen, loud enough to wake the dead.

But evidently, not Bill's parents. He was icily bitter at how little surprise he felt. 

"Yours?" It asked, syrupy-sweet. "Little friend, I was here before the first tree was cut to burn the first flames to warm your kind here. I had tasted flesh before the first babe grew to manhood on these stones. I lived here...and I will live, and live and _live_. Up and down and all around. Would you like to see It, Little Buddy. See just where I live?"

Bill kicked out savagely, but Pennywise easily dodged with an amusement gleaming in Its yellow eyes that sent fury rippling through Bill's blood like nothing else. He thrashed wildly, but it did no good. Its uninjured hand had him pinned to the cool white surface of the fridge as firmly and nearly as a butterfly on cork. 

Lacking any further options, Bill spat in Its face. He was grimly repulsed to see that saliva trickling down the thick white paint was tinged black with whatever Its rotten excuse for a heart pumped through those filthy veins. 

It looked almost charmed by his struggles, and leaned forward to sniff around him, quivering like a wolf about latch its teeth into a deer. Bill let out a cry of disgust as he felt saliva drip in cold and thick ropes from Its teeth to brush over his face. It's grip had loosened, but the sheer monstrosity of Its size hit him as he stared up, up, up towards Its painted face, so much bigger than he'd ever be. 

Still, It seemed oddly discontent as stared down at him, red-lined lips parted as it inhaled - and then Bill realised why. 

"I'm not afraid of you," he snarled. It's gaze snapped down, staring at him with something dark curdling in those hooded eyes. But Bill was undaunted. 

"I don't care w-w-what you are, or how long you've lived in this shitty town. S-stay away from my brother and get the fuck out of our house." 

And not allowing himself a moment to hesitate or think it through, he lunged forward and shoved It back towards the yawning drop of the open cellar stairs. 

There were none of the noises he expected as Pennywise's startled face dropped out of sight, no harsh thumps or tumbled banging. Bill set his teeth and peered down the steps, prepared to see the clown hanging in place, coiled to strike. 

Instead, with a choked gasp, he saw his mother's body in a crumpled heap at the bottom, blue eyes staring blindly at nothing. For a second, it remained motionless, just long enough for him to take an aborted step forward in helpless horror. Then the head twisted round and round, far beyond the stretch of any human neck as a sickening crunch echoed up to him. His mother's face grinned cheerfully at him, distorted features lit by the glow of Its eyes as It scuttled off into the sloshing dark. 

Bill slammed the door shut and fled, knocking his knee against the bannister in his haste to scramble back up the stairs as his breath sobbed out wildly between his teeth. 

"Bill?" 

His mother was standing in the doorframe of her bedroom, framed in the rose-tinged glow of her bedside lamp. Her hair was mussed about her head, and her eyes were heavy with sleep as she pulled her faded bathrobe around her, so safe and achingly familiar. 

Bill's chest was heaving, but it felt like no air was reaching his lungs. He couldn't even look at her. 

Down the hallway, Georgie's light had flickered on and he could hear his brother calling out. Bill set his jaw and swept past his mother as he headed into George's room, eyes screwed up angrily against the tears welling up hot in his eyes. 

* * *

It was with great difficulty the next morning that Bill watched Georgie's small figure climb into the car with their mother the next morning to drive to get the new school shoes she'd been threatening for a month. 

There hadn't been a question of Bill going. His mother had declared that he looked pale and flushed when he came downstairs for breakfast and sent him straight back up, lamenting with a worried look that letting his friends over so soon after his jaunt out in the rain had probably made his fever worse than ever before. 

Bill had been too unnerved to argue. It had been hard enough to come downstairs to the sight of her bending over Georgie as she slid his plate over the table. That soft auburn hair, so like his own, had spilled loose from its braid to hide her face; for a second he was convinced that she'd look up and he'd see yellowed eyes blazing against paint caked stark white, that her hair would shift and that terrible, terrible grin would be peeking through, curling her face up like paper crumpled in his fist-

But there had been no ravenous glee in her voice when she looked up, only gentle concern, and that - that had thrown him most of all. Her worried eyes peering at him, her soft hand on his forehead, the care with which she fussed over his breakfast tray - all perfectly familiar and completely alien. Part of him wanted nothing more than to cling to her waist, to let out the sobs clogging up his throat and bask in her warmth, to let himself know that it had all been a nightmare, that his mother loved him and that cold, aching emptiness weighing down his memories of her was a cruel trick that had slipped away like morning mist. 

But the other part of him - the part that had sent him stumbling jerkily back upstairs like one of the broken robots from Richie's comics, that same part that had smelt that stagnant bitterness in the kitchen - was just waiting for the rug to be yanked out under his feet. 

He had loved his parents, loved them still, but ever since that day of rain when he'd woken from one impossible dream to another, that love had been steeped in fear. There was an odd inevitability to it, even in this house where Georgie still laughed and played and breathed. The shutters would come down, the house would fall silent, and Bill would be back out in the cold with his nose pressed against the glass, desperately seeking a way back in.

No. Bill had brought Georgie in out of the rain that day, and Bill would keep him safe, even if their parents couldn't. He had already explained the danger to him last night, huddled together in the dark so no one else heard. 

"Did he come back? The clown?" Georgie had whispered, voice so high with fear that he sounded half his age in the dark. 

"Yes," Bill had murmured back, arms wrapped around the little brother he couldn't bear to let go of even there. "B-b-but I sent him away. You've just g-g-got to make sure that you stay away from the drains. And the c-c-canal. And the basement-" 

(Georgie had never liked the basement, hated going in there - why hadn't Bill ever _listened?_ ) 

But even with Georgie's hushed promise to stick close to their mother, it was difficult to ignore the gnawing dread in Bill's stomach as he watched the car pull away, a fine spray of water arcing out from the wheels as they cut through the flooded driveway. No rain today, at least, with the sky a fine light blue endlessly reflected in the glassy water sheeting Derry's calm streets.

Downstairs, his father sat at his workbench in the garage, the radio crooning an accompaniment to his rattling tools, but still Bill felt that threat poised in the air - not of shadows or monsters, but the icy quiet left in their wake which was somehow a thousand times worse. He couldn't stand a moment of it. 

Bill could have gone straight to Richie's after shimmying down the slim drainpipe by his window. Stan would be out with his father to watch the birds today, and poor Eddie closeted in the stifling confines of his mother's living room with his visiting aunt. But Richie would gladly accepted a hand with his chores, or a chance to regale Bill with the latest polish on his favourite Voices, or simply to race their bikes down the slick street while Wentworth Tozier dryly remarked on the statistics of head trauma in the fine youth of today's Derry. 

And yet. And yet. Bill couldn't shake that pressing feeling of...not wrongness, exactly, but incompleteness. Like his favourite book with the middle pages left blank, or a circle drawn wide without being fully sketched closed. 

Stan, Eddie, Richie. They were with him again - his eyes pricked with tears that he couldn't explain - but they were still...unbalanced. Missing some vital pieces in a group that had never previously felt empty, and it made Bill feel exposed in a way he couldn't describe. Like there was a vulnerability only he could see, and it pressed on his thoughts with an urgency that left his fingers twitching and his gut knotted up with anxiety. 

_A boy slumped over in the river, his T-shirt a ragged stripe of red. Hands scrabbled helplessly against the riverbank as Henry Bowers bared his teeth and hefted a rock. A bedroom lay dark and empty as bloodied letters shone accusingly against the plaster wall_.

They were scattered, they were alone, they were all caught out in the open, but a thousand years ago there had been a soft voice on the telephone, a man who had known him, someone who had seen more than anyone the importance of sticking together, of finding each other-

Which is why he found himself leaning over Silver's handlebars as it shot through Derry, the spokes of its wheels flashing a brilliant white in the gleaming fall sunlight. Faster and faster, further and further away, until he was carried well past Richie's house, outstripping the familiar suburban haunts that he and Georgie had known all their lives, and into the dirt path that led out to the golden sweep of farmlands. 

It was a pleasant ride. Water slopped at his wheels after the heavy rains of yesterday, but Silver glided serenely through it all as Bill gratefully drew the crisp, tangy air deep into his cough-roughened lungs. Dry leaves blazed red against the blue of the sky and cascaded from the trees with every gusting breeze to settle amongst their sodden fellows in the squelching mud. They crunched softly under Silver as Bill braked into a sharp turn, and he found himself laughing with the sheer joy of the ride as the sunlight warmed his face. 

Derry had always been Bill's home, but he'd rarely ever found it as beautiful as he did in that moment. 

He was so caught up in that thought that he almost missed the figure slumped bonelessly against the greyed tree trunk, curled in the blackened earth far back from the snaking line of the road. Bill's glance was so light and brief that he almost didn't recognise him, only to jolt to a sudden halt that nearly flung him headfirst over Silver's handles as his brain caught up with his eyes. 

It was Henry Bowers, sitting back against the tree with a glazed stare focused on nothing in particular. A battered red ball sat on the ground besides him, streaked with fresh mud. 

He hadn't seen Bill, hunched over on the ground as he was, and it occurred to Bill that he should keep it that way. Bowers was-

\- _a_ _bloodied teenager staring down at him with maddened blue eyes, mouth slashing into a frenzied grin-_

 _-a man, faded and shrunken, but still whooping with wild laughter as he lunged at Mike, the flash of his knife reflected in those eyes which glinted with something more than madness, the alien gaze of It burning through his ragged face like a flame through candlewax_ -

-crying? 

He was, Bill realised with disbelief - soft, snorting sobs, the kind that you only let yourself make when there's no one around to mock your blubbering. Certainly, Bowers himself would have mercilessly swooped on in any kid in school sitting as he was there, huddled in as small as possible as tremors racked his frame. 

Though Bill wasn't sure any kid in school would have restrained themselves from flat-out bawling if they were sporting the angry red welts striping Bowers' arms from wrist to shoulder, or the ugly purpling bruise splotched across the left side of his swollen face as he raised his head to see Bill balancing on his bike, wordlessly watching him. 

The reaction was immediate; Henry's lips drew back from his teeth in a rat-vicious snarl as he surged to his feet, wet and reddened eyes screwed up in a scourge of hate and humiliation. 

"What the fuck are you doing here, Denbrough?" 

Bill ignored it. "What happened t-t-to you?" 

Bowers' face purpled in rage, though whether it was from Bill's query or just his flat refusal to flee on his bike at the obvious warning was difficult to guess. 

"Why don't you f-f-fuck right off, you-" 

He made an attempt to rise to his feet, no doubt with the mind to deal out the kind of beating that would make his own look like a petty tumble, but sank back down with a pained gasp that made Bill suspect those bruises were streaking blue right down to the ribs. 

"You're hurt," he told Bowers, and the older boy stilled - perhaps out of pain, or perhaps because of that strange, calm cadence to Bill's tone, like an adult talking to a peer rather than Stuttering Bill to Henry Bowers who had whaled on him and his friends since the first grade. "Y-you need to get looked at it, or you m-m-might wreck yourself."

"I don't need _help_ ," Bowers snapped out between gritted teeth, although he didn't lash out to seize Bill's throat between his hands as Bill was half-expecting. Instead he watched with wary eyes as Bill lowered himself closer, gaze flicking to Bill's feet like he was expecting Bill to seize the chance to get a little payback for a solid schooltime's worth of batshit cruelty. 

Although...maybe that wasn't quite right, Bill thought with a frown. Bowers had always been the terror of their playground days, and there wasn't a Loser among them who hadn't learned to dodge him since long before the golden summer haze where they'd locked arms against the monster haunting Derry's streets. But it had been a casual, hodgepodge cruelty, petty as it was brutish. Not the steel-brilliant, murderous desperation that had stalked them into Neibolt, honed to madness's razor-thin edge. 

Bill thought of rocks whistling through the air, of something swimming deep in the shock of those eyes. Yes, they'd all seen it before the end, hadn't they? That as the days trailed longer and the nights choked with heat, something darker had bubbled in Bowers' blood, something wilder, something-

(something whispering?) 

Bowers was staring at him. His face, sheened in gleaming sweat, was very, very still. 

Bill reached out a hand. 

Suddenly, there was a rustle of dry leaves, and in a blue of gold and white, a dog came bounding out of the trees and licked Bowers' cheek. 

Bill blinked, stupefied. He'd never pictured Bowers with any kind of pet. If pushed, he'd have pictured something that would hang snarling off a chain as some poor kid scrambled up a tree - something squat and hungry, with teeth too big for its pointy face. 

Not this inquisitive creature with its lolling pink tongue, soft brown eyes and plume of a tail that wagged wildly as it nosed against Bowers' arm. It clearly knew him; there was a familiarity present in the way it yapped happily in Bowers' face, closer than any kid in Derry would ever dared get. Bill noticed an odd gentleness to the snuffling nose as it licked against a yellowed bruise by his elbow. But Bowers seemed frozen in place, and the dog rounded on Bill, whiskers quivering wildly as it earnestly pawed the ball sitting forgotten at Bowers' side to roll over to Bill's feet. 

Bill couldn't help the laugh that escaped him then, scratching happily at the dog's chin. Something cold clinked under his fingers, and he caught sight of a faded tag spelling out MR CHIPS in neat lettering against the creamy frills of fur and bunched muscle that denoted a rather jumbled ancestry. 

The dog perked up sharply; it seemed something had caught its attention - a fat pheasant perhaps, or some call Bill couldn't hear - and it streaked back off into the tangled undergrowth, tail still fanning out in a cheerful blur. 

He raised his head to ask Bowers who'd given it _that_ name, only to stop cold. 

Bowers had lurched up roughly to his feet, and his face... Bill had never seen a look like that on anyone's face before. Not that dripping glare of hate, all twisted up with some kind of...guilt? Fear? 

"Tell anyone about this," he spat out at Bill, and Bill didn't know if he meant the bruises, the crying, or the dog, or just all of it, "and I will _fucking kill you_."

With that, he staggered off into the bleary afternoon light, which seemed strangely colder on Bill's skin than a minute ago. 

Bill watched him go with a nameless dread thickening in his throat. The clearing was empty now, and in its hushed silence he'd had a chance to think. To scroll back through all those memories, a few months and a lifetime ago. 

It was ridiculous, it couldn't possibly matter, and yet... 

Try as he might, Bill couldn't ever remember Henry Bowers having a dog before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, everyone, but I was so touched at all the feedback on the last chapter! Would love to hear what you liked this time, what you didn't, and anything else in between!


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